Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/313

 CH. II.] imposts upon commerce, they may impose what land taxes, and taxes, excises, and duties on all instruments, and duties on every fine article, that they may judge proper." "Congress may monopolize every source of revenue, and thus indirectly demolish the state governments; for without funds they could not exist." "As congress have the control over the time of the appointment of the president, of the senators, and of the representatives of the United States, they may prolong their existence in office for life by postponing the time of their election and appointment from period to period, under various pretences." "When the spirit of the people shall be gradually broken; when the general government shall be firmly established; and when a numerous standing army shall render opposition vain, the congress may complete the system of despotism in renouncing ail dependence on the people, by continuing themselves and their children in the government."

§ 299. A full examination of the nature and extent of the objections to the several powers given to the general government will more properly find a place, when those powers come successively under review in our commentary on the different parts of the constitution itself. The outline here furnished may serve to show what those were, which were presented against them, as an aggregate or mass. It is not a little remarkable, that some of the most formidable applied with equal force to the articles of confederation, with this difference only, that though unlimited in their terms, they were in some instances checked by the want of power to carry them into effect, otherwise than by requisitions 35